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  • A-Balibrea - The Barcelona Model

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    BARCELONA

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    95 vues19 pages

    A-Balibrea - The Barcelona Model

    Transféré par

    2opera
    BARCELONA

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Chapter 12 Urbanism, culture and the post-industrial city: challenging the “Barcelona Model” Mari Paz Balibrea the project a llows: "Each of the target cities will be encourage iting and stylish places to live and work, mirroring the success of the Catalan urban reg ration” (Wintour and Thorpe 1999) The view from inside is not much different. Whilst in the re rit the corruption and speculation condoned and stimulated during Socialist Party's period in office, resulting in their being ousted from government in 1996, the majority of people in Barcelona remain satis with the way the local Socialist government has managed things, icularly with respect to its urban and jtectural projec jontinue to vote for them in local elections. D 192 Olympic Games, Bai enjoy an uninterrupted heyday of national and international prestige, as spite the ec ‘celona has continued well as practically unanimous consensus with regard to th ality and beauty of its urban jevelopments and the habitability of a city seen as diterranean as well as “humat Of course, the absence of any notable dissent among the city's people has b 19S which have been implemented (RIB) howaver, this consensus is @ sign ‘a ternalizing criteria which coincide with th economic interests” and they therefore cons ‘one of the most serious aspects of recent political and social processes” (Etxezarreta e! 1996: 288). \deological point of view, the production of consensus the principal means of legitimizing domination and of co-opting potentially critical citizens (Ripalda 1999: 30; Esquirol 1998: 113-30). Any hegemonic ideology will seek to devise for its “intorpellated” (i.e. locate, construct) subjects a representation of reality that, while favouring its own interests, Can at the same time be presented as the only truth about that realty. This er correspondingly assumes that the pular consensus on Barcelona s to be regarded with scepticism and vi e, particularly in view of seen its quality of life deteriorate since the 1980s, and the massive lation accompanying the restructuring of the city (Roca 1994). In what lows | will analyse the urban changes that, since the early 1980s, have ed the seductive Barcelona of the 1990s. | will additionally defir of the major mechan ‘ough which the perception of thosé changes has been constructed, paying particular attention to the role player Dy culture. My aim is to expose the ideological and political underpinnings sustaining the consensus described above, This chapter, therefore, focuses fon the dominant and institutionalized forms in which the process of generating socal space and deriving meaning from it has taken place in post | am awar ial, urban practices ty, but will not deal with them hi (ae ee The city as ideological text ‘As soon as we think of urban spaces as texts, and therefore as vehicles of ideology.? then urbanism and the production of consensus become interconnected processes. Urban and architectonic built spaces constitute privileged sites within which ideological interpellation takes place. To give irban regeneration project is also to semanticize (or resemanticize) the former; lke every signification process, this is intensely ideological (Ramirez 1992: 173-82). \t becomes crucial to know what is being built in the city and how the newly built spaces are endowed with hegemonic meaning, in order to understand how individuals and collectives are ideologically interpellated as citizens. As Georg Simmel argued long ago “The production of spatio-temporaities is both a constitutive and fundamental moment to the social process in general as well as fundamental to the establishment of values” (quoted in Harvey 1996: 246) Fredric Jameson specifies: shape to the collective sphere through an the building interpellates me — it proposes an identity for me, {an identity that can make me uncomfortable or on the contrary cebscenely complacent, that can push me into revolt or acceptance of my antisociality and criminality or on the other hand into subalternity and humility, into the obedience of a servant or a lower-class citizen. More than that, it interpellates my body or | interpeliates me by way of the body || (1997: 129) | ‘As soon as they come into being, buildings and urban spaces signily. First of all, this is because they change the structure of perception in the everyday urban experience of citizens. Let us take, for example, the recent opening of | new avenues and arteries in Barcelona, such as the Rambla del Raval. the carrer Marina and the extension of the Avinguda Diagonal and carrer Arago to the sea. In the old city, the Casc Antic, the longitudinal demolition of entire blocks of houses was necessary to make room for the Rambla del Raval in the north-eastem areas of Poblenou and Besos, which have been completely redeveloped and restructured, all changes have followed the closing down of the local industries and the revaluation of the land they once occupied. Such spatial changes can generate positive effects for the citizen, such as anew sense of cleanliness and rationalization producing pride and satisfaction with the current configuration of the city; or negative eftects such as a sense of alienation and displacement at the loss of the original habitat (Terdiman 1993: 106-47; Benjamin 1973). The result will depend on the citizen's previous relationship to the now transformed spaces and on the material and symbolic conditions under which she has experienced the change, and will also be affected by the degree af persuasiveness of the different discourses circulating and giving meaning to the changes. In the case of Barcelona, these discourses have overwhelmingly, almost monolithically, been favourable to | the urban changes implemented in the city." Citizens are not the only targets interpellated in the process o resignifying the city, In accordance with the log. the tourist industry (as nal feature of th nomy), the entire nS into a lucrative, luxury, fun commodity that can be rapi ied by the tourist, a leisur commod jied repeatedly in the purchase of a plane ticket, a book on Gaul, tickets for a concert at the Palau de la Musica, the booking of a hotel room or taurant table. In each and every one of these activities, al of them marked and global practices and inte: — or especially — in @ of those activities nat involving an n (for example, the following of recommended tourist r0 la ruta del Modernisme) the semantics and d meneutic en constructed for the foreign viewer, sitated @ previous political and econom bilitation of vention in the form of the restoration, faceulitting and buildings, the equipment and staffing of venues, the productio bibliograr the tourist trip stems from the 9, etc. Dean Ma argues hat the therapeutic quality it’s desire to create a totality out of the visited space, one that saves her from the everyday fragmented reality ner in the modern world (1976: 7,13, 15). Such a totality can'b ned in an alien environment because the tourist can redui Y limited number of experiences, and its past to a few v museums, Barcelona as a leisure and tourist site needs nstantly to oduce a totalizing and coherent representation/meaning of the city, one hat d pleasant to consume for this kind 0 sy visitor Not unrelau d 10 this logic of resignitication, sometimes the construction of a ne 0 an urban reconfiguration in need of new privileged signifiers that can be used to represent the redefined city as whole. This is the case of architectural urban projects such as the Foster ‘communications tower on Tibidabo or the Port Olimpic where a ne area is located. Due to the social function perforrned by these new uit spaces and artifacts, they become the signifiers be synthesize the current dominant meaning of the city as a Mediterrar Hr industry. Today, these places routes and their icons appear on many tourist maps as well 2s on every visual representation of Barcelona financed e acquited by these new signifiers in recent he prominenct ears works against the symbolic status previously enjoyed by other urban an architectonic spaces of the city, notably those which allude to its industrial Mc of the land th at has been turned into service, leisure or residential s Since the 1980s has been produced by the revaluation of old industria land, and the demolition of the old factory buildings previously occupying it 208 functions in their entirety (often as cultural, sometimes as residential spaces), while desemanticized fragments of others have been preserved as ‘monuments: for example, the chimneys in the Poblenou district \from an old textile factory) or in the Parallel district from a former power station) These fragments not only lose any practical function, but in their new n their socially symbolic potential is also reduced. In theory, such fragments (for example, a chimney formerly used to extract fumes) have the potential to bi allusion to the city’s past. Or do they? These now monumentalized "objects' me symbols of bygone socio-economic activity, an undoubtedly refer to the past, but their spatial recontextualization, the new syntax of space, disconnects them from the local history in which they originated. Isolated in the middle of areas now reconverted into shopping malls, new residential complexes for the middle classes or luxury offices for business executives, they can hardly be more than flat and mute tations, And in so being, they are rendered increasingly unable to convey a sense of their own historicity to those ignorant of local history. The historicity of these places can be deciphered through historical knowledge, but much less through the experience of bodily interaction with the new spatial configurations. Indeed, these fragments’ disposition in space conceals the complexity of an industrial past characterized by social struggles. tha new configuration of space which promises the absence of conflicts and equality through consumption and the market.” In other words, they fail to capture a culture, and a politics, of the place where they come from. Much the same could be argued in the case of those old industrial buildings given ‘and human relationships that were lived out on that spot, replacing it new functions as cultural spaces. The potential allusion to the past that theie mere presence invokes has been restored, aestheticized, to the extent that the end product mostly loses its capacity to refer to a critical and complex memory of industrial/capitalist development and exploitation and of the role that this complex history, imbedded in the building and its surroundings, has played in the city’s current prosperity. In those areas where there has been a strong process of gentrification, these architectural quotations are even more alienating, in the sense that they are no longer connecting with the memory of those neighbours who had dwelled there in the past. Those. Who had used the spaces, and their families, are no longer there to turn them into everyday spaces of shared memory, Under such conditions, the architectural quotation of the past paradoxically promotes amnesia and an absence of reflection on history. This new monumentality turns the object from the past into an empty shell, a liberated signitier with a highly tenuous and malleable signified attached to it, ‘whose quasi-floating character can be easly appropriated both to justify the local government's interest in keeping the memory of the city alive, and to serve as the Jago of a shopping mall. Thus, its resignification is, at the same. time, a desemanticization, Those who favour this desemanticized conserva: tion-production-resignification of space participate in and benefit from the politics of history implied in such uses of these objects from the past also a politicalideological dimension to aesthetics that is relevant to the urban text, Architecture and urbanism are applied implemented only when and if there is sufficient capital to fina fojects and sufficient political power to back them. Urban s the large-scale realestate business, is a classic phenom of local corruption sustaining every urban development proc production of form and beauty the terrain of the aesthetic is also an int component of the: disciplines. The presence of a mutual tension and interchange between aesthetic and politice-economic considerations jided in the fields of urbanism and architecture. What is peculier democratic Barcelona with respect to this tension is the resignifying pace, which has in tum produced an intensification of th nponent. One e le comes immediately to mind: between 1986 and 1999 the incl spent 6,923 millon Con its campaign Barcelona pose't guapa, intended to promote and subsidize the face-iifting of uildings located around the city. According to exMayor Pasqual Maragal lishment programme promoted through the Barcelona posa't Juapa campaign “consolidates the citizen's percep of public space as 5 -ommon goad, contributes to the improvement of the collective heritage and fanquility and sociablens 1 city” (Ajuntamen 1992; 6). It should also be added that this camy sign has ma the modernist architectural patrimony of the cit ly located in the xample district (Ajuntament 1992: 1999). It is not coincidental that this modernist heritage, dominated by the work of Antoni Gaudi, has become Ne of the pillars sustaining the city’s tourist cultural provision and, more ally, ofits constructed image and personality. The prolifer estorations, together with a policy of awarding the cate jiding to some of these considered part of the city’s, that is, part of a public, patrimony), has ical strategy, which brilliantly exploits the tive aspect of most of these bul 195: the fact that their facades can be seen from the public space of the streets, technical supervision of 2 group of notable architects and urbanists. To un and the quality and attractiveness of many of the urban ute Bar proje nowadays const s urban space o exceptional media attention that this group has attracted is also a crucial m that Ba city of architects” (Me 1994a). The quantity and quality of the work of these }ecoming the only, or at Jeast the privileged, element by which it and thus a decisive compon f the city’s seductive appeal. Unt 990s, the rehabilitation and face-ifting of entire key areas creat 20 Urban spaces and cultural facilities, many of them p ut fail ude an architectural project by a named archit ence, and Calatrava, Isozaki, Moneo, Mirall thers intensifies the aesthetic signification of these projects, turning them, by the same token, into Privileged signitiers of what | have previously defined as a “designer” city The constant tributes paid to the city’s beauty have helped t distract the attention of visitors and citizens alike from other fundamental less satisfactory, issues: employment, housing, public transpor even the questioning of the same urban projects whose aesthetic value is so intensely praised. One could say, provocatively drawing on Walter Benjamin's um (1969: 217-51), that the more aesthetics is politica in Barcelona, the more politics is itself aestheticized, so that political onsensus and the obedience of the masses are achieved by continually Producing for them what is perceived as aesthetic or artistic gratification. It 's clear, then, that a city is an ideological text. Let us move n systematic analysis of how this text has been (relwrit ts forms have been filled with meaning, ani spatial changes nave 15 10 shape @ political ideology in democratic Barcelona Culture, urbanism and the production of ideology In my opinion, the most remarkable ph nomenon in the process of urban change, that is, in the major tra insformations undergone by Barcelona's urbar fabricitext, is the extraordinary bro: dening of the material and symbol occupies by culture, The most important changes affecting the social body and the eco my have been justified in the name of culture, which becomes their structural axis. By invoking culture, the ideological continuity of the consensus with regard to the city has been made possible. The connection between culture and urbanism is establ shed through the latter's capacity to ' public space chetorically defined as open to all,’ and place of encounter and of the production of collective culture. af of the 1990s, is 3 UP until the frst characterized by the enormous proliferation of cult that house “Culture” with a capital “C”) and public spaces of great impact and visibility: squares and monuments came first, then museums, theatres, sports complexes, avenues, promena The beginning of this trend dates back to the period of the Transicién ( Bohigas 1985) and the Etxezarreta et al. 1996; arly stages of Socialist leadership of the council by the mayor Narcis Serra and then Pasqual Mar ll The discourse on the need tc monumentalize and rehabilitate the city so as to serve its ‘spaces of identification for the community, and the pressure exercised on al leaders by important grassroots residents movements in order make things move in this direction, are paradigmatic trends s period {As Oriol Bohigas, the head of the C pout it, the task was alze" the outskins, “giving them significant collective value’ and to restore the historic centre by reversing 1 of deci it had suffered, thus helping to “improve collective conscious (Bohigas 1985: 20). The aim of this urban policy was to produce a greater ral capital and ective memory would be recognized within each neighbo ° rived areas of the city was, in reality, an attempt to bridge glaring inequalities and to foster social reconciliation by allocating cultural ané alin the form of {among othe ) monuments and publi The continuities and the ruptures in the discourse nplementation of urban transformations in Barcelona throughou democratic period must be understood, at least partially, in The major urban projects that would from the characterize Barcelona's urbanism were largely justified throu omoted construction as a public service designed to benefit th everyday life of citizens, including those most disenfranchised, The logic an: exponential escalation, in terms of quantity and quality, of the urban projects that followed. riggered the change? The extent of the social ing of flected from the tire Spanish state that was being wards. In the case of Barcelona, the transformations consisted it antling of much manufacturing industry, which turned Barcelona into yet another example of what has been coma ta he known glohally as a past- industrial city. Under these circumstances, it became imperative to look for @ 10 make the local econot ainable. This signalled the beginning of a shift in the city omy is “clean” industries devoted to the production of culture and technology: a local manifestation of a worldwide process where information and entertainment beco forces, proliferation of sports infra 0; Harvey 1 and cultural centres (Cohen 1998: 1 246; Smith 1996). For major economic inte the city, the urban transformati 1ed by the projects for monumentalzing the outskirts and for regenerating he historic centre came at ight time, allowing the economic recessio pe tackled, It was a first step towards the reconfiguration ofthe city, and the ame economic sectors would exercise pressure in order to make 997). The pressure ex ised by big financial or, eventually, the alliance between the two, translated materially into the promotion of a mixed economy main way of financing public urba opment, Politicians preset 7 through its hamessing to the priorities of the welfare state (Bohigas 1985: population, the process of monumentalizing the outskirts and of improving public spaces around the city has, paradoxically, faciltated the transition to @ situation of progressive gentrification, privatization and more and more restricted access to public spaces. In this new situation, we are witnessing the progressive erosion of the meaning of the term “public and, with it, the redefinition of the space ‘occupied by culture. This is not only because culture is more and more radically commodified and dependent on private producers deciding who has access to their (also private) spaces of consumption (Rifkin 2000). Culture is also redefined because those representing the public interest (local governments) now understand culture as.a key industry for the local econamy, and not just as he symbolic realm where ideology is produced or as the realm of aesthetics According to Pep Subirés, Head of the Olimpiada Cultural and also then director of the Centre de Cultura Contemporania (CCB): In the irreversible reconfiguration of large cities as service centres, couture plays a basic role. This is not just a matter of having a good supply of events, prestigious museums, for internal and tourist consumption. You also have to, perhaps most importantly, have the capacity to receive, recycle and export ideas, sensibilities, projects which improve the internal quality of life and upgrade the city in international competition. No eity with a rch cultural life lacks soli cultural structures and resources for contemporary crestivity (1989: 6) ‘According to this interpretation, culture ("ideas, sensibilities, projects") is a ‘commodity that needs to be produced in a competitive market, for which purpose certain means of production ("cultural structures and resources”) are also necessary. Pasqual Maragall himself published Refent Barcelona (Remaking Barcelona) in 1986: a key book for understanding his government's political vision as well as its specific objective of transforming Barcelona's, economy by gearing it towards the tourist, technology and cultural industries. He states that Barcelona has the capacity to become the northern capital the European south,"° given its economic strength and its very attractive Mediterranean “art of living”: “Beyond the existing reality of the Catalan lands, we have to go further to became the ‘European north of the south’ {and move in the world market of culture, tourism, economic investments and so on. The possibilities are enormous” (1988: 95). This incorporation of culture into the economic realm becomes an even more complex issue when considered alongside that of Catalan Rationalism ata time when the Spanish state was democratizing and starting 10 recognize the rights of the historic nationalities comprising it. Within this propitious climate, Barcelona has been able to consolidate itself, politically and symbolically, as the capital of a Catalan nation without a state, in accordance \with all medern Western nationalist projects, Cultural facilities, those housing ae Culture with @ capital "C’ have played a key role here. The conception of the Museu Nacional drt de Catalunya, the reconstruction and extension of the Liceu, the building of aTeatre Nacional de Catalunya, of a new Arxiu de la Corona diragé, or of the Auditori, have bean implemented by the autonomous and/or local governments as ideological instruments in the construction of a nineteenth-century-style nationalism. More specifically these centres were conceived of as spaces which would organize culture from above and stockpile the cultural capital of the local elite while, at the same time, educating the masses in appreciation of this cultural heritage’s ‘Supposed public and community value (Duncan 1991). Other Spanish cities. ‘such as Madrid (Centro de Arte Reina Sotial, Bilbao (Museo Guggenheim and Valencia (Institut Valencia d Art Modern, have had a policy of embodying their state” politics in one large cultural centre by a big-name architect, the Container being as important as its contents. Barcelona, however, has chosen to disseminate the politico-symbolic meaning projected by the cultural space in multiple architectural interventions. Of course, as in the other cities mentioned (the Guggenheim in Bilbao is pethaps the most obvious example) these centres, apart {rom consolidating the nation’s symbolic capital, are integral parts of the area's tourist appeal (Walsh 1995) and function as spaces, where the national heritage can be consumed. They are, as Neil Harris (1990) provocatively calls them "department stores of culture This superposition of madern nationalism onto a “postindustnal economy and a post-modern cultural logic does not always produce the harmonious convergence of interests we have mentioned above. While Catalan nationalist discourse has supported every space which symbolized the intensification of national identity and collective memory, in a global context in which the nation-state is being weakened and questioned, not all projects in the city have served to consolidate that particular nationalism. The long-standing rivalry between the local Socialist government of Barcelona (PSC) and the autonomous Catalan nationalist government (CiU} over who has ‘most successfully appropriated the meaning of Barcelona, and their disputes over the awarding of cultural funding, reveal two different responses to nationalism in post-modernity. | have referted earlier to Pasqual Maragall’s projected definition of Barcelona as the “northern capital of the European south’ Within the same paragraph he warns against the danger of Barcelona becoming associated with European nationalities “smaller than Catalonia” or forming part of an “intemational of oppressed nationalities.” By articulating these "dan be perceived as a form of nationalist victimization ar essentialism, making clear that nationalist ® demands are not top priority in his political agenda, ‘even though at some points he invokes Catalunya and the Paisos Catalans in his framing of the question, This is not at all surprising coming from the local leader of a Spanish political party, the PSOE; but it seems to me that his anti nationalist stand here does not obey a centralist logic conceiving of Spain as 2 unity with a radial centre in Madrid."” Rather, | interpret it as a positioning F3; Maragall seems to be dissociating himself from what might 218 with respect to a new historical conjuncture, in which the local urban unit is alled upon to have un Catalan or Spanish) and the is secular, political claims. In other words, Mi: sssarily subordinate to alls appealing to @ locat urban rhetor that might be called “nationalist” only to the extont that i ral and political practices as characteristic and reinforcing constituents of collective identity, which determine whether social consensus is reach: social

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